The cases heard before the Supreme Court today will have far-reaching implications beyond deciding whether businesses have the right to withhold contraceptive insurance coverage, particularly if the court decides to side with special interests over established law. Religious liberty is a fundamental right and one that must be honored to protect individuals and faith-based institutions. But religious liberty also means employers should not be able to impose their religious faith on employees with different beliefs. If the Court decides that for-profit corporations are entitled to this right, the result will have dramatic impacts on how corporations control our private lives.

A bad Hobby Lobby decision will have an immediate negative impact on the right of a woman to make personal health care decisions, but it could also become a blueprint for discrimination against people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community; allow corporations to evade important federal laws; and change the corporate structure as we know it.

That is why all progressives should hope for a decision that protects our important religious liberties by ruling that a for-profit corporation cannot have a religion and that no employer is allowed to impose a burden on their workers by coercing them to follow religious beliefs that are not their own.